Director: Jee-woon Kim
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 4/10
To say I was not expecting much from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to a starring role would be nothing less than a vast understatement. The Last Stand looked like nothing more than a generic action flick featuring actors that are well past their prime. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few noteworthy scenes, that’s exactly how this film turned out.
Arnold makes his triumphant return as leading man by playing a small town sheriff who must stop a notorious drug kingpin from making it to the Mexican border. Along with the help of his fellow deputies and a wacky gun nut (Johnny Knoxville), Arnold vows to stop the bad guys and save the day.
The film itself is as dull and lifeless as the trailer, which is a shame since the director, Jee-woon Kim, also directed one of my favorite films I Saw the Devil. There were small glimpses of cleverness sprinkled in this film, but nothing in comparison to Kim’s previous effort. Overall, the story was a complete bore and even when the violence did ramp up, it was too little too late.
In fact, the gratuitous and excessive violence was really the only thing that gave this film any character at all. Watching Arnold tackle someone off a roof and blast a hole in his head on the way down was a joy to watch. Not every scene of violence was entirely over the top and tongue in cheek, but if it were maybe the movie would have been less of a chore to watch.
Plot-wise, you’d be better off not evening thinking about it for a second after you leave the theater or even while you’re watching it. There are so many holes and incongruities that analyzing it at all will make you despise it. Best turn your brain off for this one.
As far as the performances go, this movie ranged from piss-poor to atrocious. As one might expect, Arnold throws out a number of stiff one-liners, all with varying degrees of failure. Knoxville is a joke and while I do recognize him as a real actor, he didn’t even act like a real human being in this movie. He was so annoyingly cartoonish that I found myself begging for his character to explode.
The rest of the cast is hardly worth mentioning. Luis Guzman, Forest Whitaker, and Peter Stormare all play the exact roles you would imagine them playing- the comic sidekick, the stick up his ass FBI guy, and the maniacal villain respectively. Harry Dean Stanton also has a small cameo, which I loved, but he’s always underused.
As stated previously, there were some genuinely interesting scenes thrown into this movie though. There’s a particularly inventive car chase through a cornfield, and another scene that makes good use of a flare gun. Unfortunately, these creative flourishes were just too infrequent to have any real baring on the film as a whole.
The Last Stand is a movie that most viewers will go into expecting nothing, and they’ll get nothing in return. Fans of Arnold will no doubt go see this and feel nostalgic, but even on that level it’s hard to make a case for seeing this. If you have any type of curiosity, just rewatch The Expendables 2, or better yet, watch I Saw The Devil and thank me later.
